Just Keep Swimming
The Question
I’m sitting on a step stool, hunched over, bleach and toothbrush in hand, scrubbing the tile grout as we get our house ready to sell. My son comes in and we talk for a few minutes.
We’ve always been comfortable speaking our truth and asking each other hard questions. As he stands there looking down at me, he asks a question that I’d been afraid to ask myself…
Do You Like Being a House Keeper?
My first reaction is defense. I’m not just a house keeper! But then the truth of it sets in…I do feel like just a house keeper and I hate it. I’m absolutely miserable and my son sees it.
I feel both relief and sadness by the fact that he sees how lost and unhappy I am; relief that he sees me and speaks the truth without any judgement or agenda to change me; sadness because I’m living a life that doesn’t feel like mine.
For several years I’d felt a stirring in my soul to find and do what I was always meant to. As soon as my son asked that question, my unhappiness was out in the open and I couldn’t ignore the stirring any longer.
I knew that scrubbing grout was not what I was meant to do with my life. How did I know?
Because scrubbing grout felt like drudgery and it was soul crushing for me. I know there are things that we all have to do that we don’t enjoy, but what happens when that’s all you’re doing? What do you do when you’re stuck in a job or life that is crushing your soul?
The First Step
The first step is always noticing and acknowledging that you want to change something. So, if you’ve acknowledged that you aren’t happy with something in your life and you want to begin moving forward in changing it, then give yourself a pat on the back and high five because you’ve taken the first step.
I’d been unhappy for years, but it wasn’t until my son asked me that question that I acknowledged to myself that I wanted more out of life and decided to do something about it. I allowed myself to believe that I was meant to do more than simply scrub grout. (Just to clarify…if scrubbing grout feeds your soul and brings you joy, then scrub away my friend. This is not about one person’s life path being better than another, it’s all about finding the path that feeds your soul.)
Just Keep Swimming
So what next? You’ve acknowledged that you’re unhappy and want to change something in your life but what do you do now?
Just keep swimming. Dory sings this to Nemo’s Dad when h’s feeling lost, hopeless and scared as they swim into a dark abyss. You don’t have to know where you’re going or when you’ll get there, all you have to do is just keep swimming.
That’s what I did…I just kept swimming, sometimes I was barely treading water and other times I was gliding along smoothly.
I learned that I had to keep swimming, even though I didn’t know exactly where I was going. In fact, the times when I stopped swimming and felt like I was drowning were the times when I tried to look too far into the future and figure out my final destination. It was scary, but I realized that I had to relax and trust my inner guide to take me where I was meant to go.
Don’t Swim Alone
It wasn’t long before I recognized that I needed others to swim along side me, to keep me from drowning and help me find my way. Allowing others to see me and help me along the way was super hard for me at first but it was a necessary part of my journey. (In my next blog post, You Have to See Yourself to Be Yourself, I’ll share more about the importance of allowing others to see and help you on your journey.)
If you’re like I was, your mind is telling you that you’ve got to figure this all out on your own. That’s not your inner guide speaking to you. That’s fear speaking and it’s simply not true. Listening to my fear and letting it guide my life is what kept me in my soul crushing drudgery for years.
So, if you want to move fear out of the driver’s seat and make a change in your life…
Take the first step.
Just keep swimming.
Don’t swim alone.
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